A Fire in the Night

by Christopher Swann

  Dawes headed for the buses while Poncho took an escalator to the airport MARTA station. Cole bypassed the skycaps at baggage claim—the girl wouldn’t have had any checked luggage—and went to the taxi stand outside. A man in a neon-green vest gazed at the line of taxis at the curb, but he snapped alert as soon as Cole walked up. “Where to, sir?”

  “Actually, I need your help,” Cole said. He held up a laminated ID card with a false name and his picture that read PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. “I’m looking for a missing girl.” With his other hand he held up his phone, which displayed a picture of Annalise that he’d taken from her father’s phone. “She’s sixteen years old, probably traveling alone, flew in around nine forty-five yesterday morning. See anyone like her?”

  The man glanced at the picture but was already shaking his head. “Man, I don’t know. So many people come through here …”

  Cole put his ID back in his jacket pocket, and when he took his hand back out, he was holding two twenties. “Take another look,” Cole said. “She’s a runaway. Her father’s really worried about her.”

  The man hesitated, then took the two twenties and peered at the picture of a smiling Annalise on the phone in Cole’s hand. “Cute girl,” he said. “But I didn’t see her. And I was out here all yesterday morning too.”

  Cole spoke with two other green-vested men at the taxi stand and came up just as empty-handed. He looked at the long line of taxis that snaked back down the terminal drive. If he had to talk to every goddamned taxi driver in Atlanta, he would.

  His phone buzzed. Dawes. Cole answered. “Tell me something good.”

  “I’m at the bus station,” Dawes said. “Woman at the counter says she might have seen her.”

  Cole made his way back inside to the Greyhound bus station, where he found Dawes talking with the uniformed woman behind the counter. “Jerilyn here says she saw the girl,” Dawes said. “But she’s worried about telling anybody.”

  Cole nodded and smiled warmly at Jerilyn, who gave him a nervous smile in return. “I understand,” Cole said. “A man walks up and wants to know if you’ve seen an underage girl, you wonder if he’s on the up-and-up.” He pulled out his ID and held it up to Jerilyn. “Mr. Smith here works for the same firm I do. We’re just trying to get this girl back to her mom and dad.”

  Jerilyn glanced at Cole’s ear and just as quickly looked away. Cole continued to smile at her. He was used to people staring at his chewed-up ear. He’d thought about wearing a watch cap to cover it, make him less memorable, but wearing a watch cap in June in Atlanta would be about as conspicuous as wearing a parka in the Sahara. Cole held out his phone with the picture of Annalise. “So you did see her?”

  Jerilyn looked at the picture and gnawed briefly on her lower lip. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I saw her—”

  “Was she okay?” Cole said, concern in his voice. “Did she seem upset?”

  “She’d lost her backpack,” Jerilyn said. “That’s how come I remember her. She put it down for a minute, and somebody snatched it. You know how it is.” Cole nodded in commiseration, and Jerilyn continued. “Anyway, she was freaking out, wanted us to make sure we didn’t have her backpack behind the counter or anything.”

  “Did she find it?” Cole asked.

  Jerilyn shook her head. “She started crying, said something about her dad. She was torn up about it.”

  Cole saw Dawes dart a glance at him at the mention of the girl’s father. Cole kept his eyes on Jerilyn. “Did she get on a bus without it?” he asked.

  Jerilyn opened her mouth, then shut it. “Maybe we should get the police, you know?” she said. “If this girl is missing like you say, we should tell them.”

  Cole nodded. “Understandable,” he said, then lowered his voice just enough to render their conversation private, even though no one else was currently at the counter. “The thing is, this girl’s father, he’s the kind of person who wants to keep things about his family private. His daughter is running away to this man she met. He’s a bad guy, Jerilyn. Exploits girls. She won’t listen, of course. They’re in love.”

  “That’s terrible,” Jerilyn said, her eyes wide.

  “Her father doesn’t want her name to get out there,” Cole said. “Especially not with this scumbag of a boyfriend. That’s why he hired us to find her. Keep it all discreet. If we call the cops, then the press finds out and the girl’s life gets ruined forever.” Cole leaned in just a hair, eyes on Jerilyn. “Please help us, Jerilyn. Help her.”

  Jerilyn worried her lower lip again, then said, “You can’t tell anyone I told you. I could lose my job.”

  Cole smiled. “That’s the last thing I would want to do,” he said.

  Jerilyn nodded solemnly, then took a deep breath. “She took a bus to Gainesville. Yesterday.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Nick woke to the thrumming of his water pipes in the walls. He lay on his back, trying to orient himself, then realized he was on the couch in his living room where he had slept. Annalise must be taking a shower. He sat up and tossed the fleece blanket off. It was raining outside, Whiteside wreathed in tattered fog. There was a soft ker-chunk as the shower was turned off, followed by a rapid hammering in the walls. Air trapped in the pipes, he thought, or maybe a water pressure issue. Or both. He rubbed his face, then stood and went into the kitchen to make coffee, taking two mugs out of the cabinet.

  When the coffee was ready, he carried both mugs to the bedroom door, which he again tapped with his foot before opening. The bed was empty, the covers kicked back, and he could hear the low hum of the exhaust fan in the bathroom. “Annalise,” he called out. “It’s me. I’ve got some coffee.” He walked into the room and put the mugs down on the side table, then turned around and stopped cold. At the far end of the bathroom, in the doorway of the walk-in closet, Annalise had frozen, a white towel wrapped around her hair like a turban. She was wearing a red dress, sleeveless with the skirt flaring out and falling to just above her knees. Ellie’s dress.

  “ARE YOU REALLY ready to retire to the mountains?” Ellie had asked him.

  They were at the Frog and Owl, a restaurant in a former gristmill outside Highlands. A celebratory dinner, trout and rack of lamb supported by a fantastic wine cellar, the night-darkened windows reflecting the candlelight.

  “It’s not retirement,” Nick said. “Not really. I’ll still be teaching.”

  Ellie’s smile was warm and a little sad. “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

  The waiter thankfully chose that moment to appear and refill their wineglasses. They sat back and regarded one another over the table as the waiter poured. Nick thought Ellie had never looked so lovely. She was wearing the red dress that he loved, the one she took out of its garment bag only for special occasions—her first promotion at the World Bank, his first teaching post in Cairo. And now they had closed on a house outside Cashiers. It needed some renovations, but it had a beautiful view of Whiteside and was exactly what Ellie wanted.

  When the waiter left, Ellie took a sip of her wine. “Western Carolina isn’t the same as Oxford,” she said.

  “Oxford,” Nick said, as if enjoying the sound of the word. “Did I really teach there?”

  “And you met me there. Best thing that ever happened to you.”

  “True,” he said. “But we didn’t really meet there. It’s more like you stalked me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t stalk you.”

  “You went to the registrar and looked up my schedule so you could bump into me after class.”

  “That’s strategic pursuing, not stalking.” She eyed him wickedly over her glass. “How else was I going to get a hotshot young professor with his head up his own ass to notice me?”

  He grinned back at her and sipped from his own glass. They sat in comfortable silence, enjoying the sight of each other. The waiter hovered in the background, and Nick gave him a subtle shake of the head, causing him to vanish. “I won’t miss Oxford or the rest of it,” Nick said. “Teachi
ng here suits me just fine. And I’ll get cable internet set up at the house so you can work from home.”

  “I’ll still have to fly to DC sometimes.”

  “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  Ellie laughed at that, a sound that drew attention not because it was loud but because it was pure, the kind of laughter that made everyone who heard it wish they were the one who had caused it. “You’re such a cheeseball,” she said, and he waggled his eyebrows, making her laugh again.

  She sighed, content. “We’re really going to move up here.”

  “We really are.”

  “Promise me something.”

  Nick set his glass down. “Anything.”

  “If you aren’t happy, you’ll tell me.”

  Now Nick laughed. “I’m very happy.”

  “I mean when we move here.” Ellie leaned forward, still smiling, but behind the smile was that dogged focus Nick so often admired and at other times found exasperating. “It’s so different from everywhere else we’ve lived. I just don’t want you to regret it.”

  Nick reached across the table and took Ellie’s hand. “You followed me for my career,” he said. “And I’m done with that. With all of it.”

  Ellie looked straight at him. “All of it?”

  And there it was, the shadow at the edge of the candlelight.

  “All of it,” he said, his eyes on hers, unwavering. And he meant it, at least at that moment. “Now I get to focus on us. On you. Just promise you won’t get tired of me.”

  Ellie raised an eyebrow. “As long as you don’t start wearing bathrobes past noon and shuffling around the house like an old man. I’ve got plans, mister. We’re going to hike every trail in these mountains.”

  Nick groaned. “You and your death marches. You’re going to kill me.” He leaned forward to kiss her hand. “So be it.”

  Ellie squeezed his hand, then released it. “Need to use the ladies’,” she said. Nick stood as she got up, then sat back down and watched her walk across the room. Ellie knew he was watching and moved her hips a bit more than usual, the red dress flaring at the bottom just below her knees to show off her calves. Nick felt an ache right then, a longing for her that was only partly about being together with her in bed later that night, or how they would hold each other afterward. It was as if he were already anticipating that he would lose her at some point in the future, although neither of them knew yet about the cancer brewing inside her. That night all Nick understood was that he would follow this woman anywhere.

  Ellie glanced back over her shoulder with a hint of a smile, and then she turned the corner and was gone.

  STANDING IN HIS bedroom, staring at Annalise wearing Ellie’s red dress, Nick needed a moment to get his voice under control. “What are you doing?” he managed to say.

  A guilty expression wavered in Annalise’s face, and then something harder set in her features. “I needed something to wear,” she said. “I just, I took a shower, and my clothes are disgusting, and I thought it’d be weird to grab one of your T-shirts—”

  “So you thought you’d put on my wife’s dress,” he said. He was astonished at how angry he was, as if his anger were a thing separate from himself rather than some inherent defect.

  Annalise looked down at herself as if seeing the dress for the first time, then back up at him. “Your wife?” she said. The open question was on her face.

  Nick gestured to the mugs on the side table. “I brought you some coffee,” he said. Then he turned and left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  He marched across the great room into the kitchen, turned and marched back, going from kitchen table to fireplace to sofa to kitchen and then around again. If it weren’t for the rain, he would walk outside around the lake, maybe take the long trail up to Whiteside and back to burn off his anger, like he had all those months ago after Ellie’s death, trying to exhaust himself so he could fall asleep. But the rain was still coming down, so he paced inside like a caged animal.

  It’s all right, he could hear Ellie say.

  No, it’s not.

  Yes.

  No, damn it, no one else should be wearing it—it’s yours.

  I don’t need it anymore.

  I need it.

  You don’t need a dress, she said, a bit sadly. You want it because you miss me.

  Damn her logic, replaying itself in his memory like a once-loved album that now annoyed you because you would never love it like you once had, never again be the person you were when you first heard it. “I don’t … want this,” he said aloud. His heart heaved once, an ugly, thudding piece of meat in his chest. He stood by the fireplace, now cold and dark, and put both hands up against the mantel and closed his eyes, as if he were bearing the weight of the stacked-stone chimney.

  “Uncle Nick?” He turned and looked up to see Annalise, now wearing one of his T-shirts and her own jeans, standing outside the bedroom door, clasping her arms across her waist. Nick opened his mouth, words like daggers sharpened and ready to be flung, when he saw the hesitancy and fear in her eyes, in the way she seemed to be holding herself in a comfortless hug. His anger drained away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Annalise shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. I never should have messed with that dress.”

  “True,” Nick conceded.

  They looked at each other across the room.

  “I hung the dress back up in the bag,” Annalise said with all the honest naïveté of a child hoping her words would make everything better.

  Nick said nothing, then sighed. Annalise looked at him warily.

  “My wife,” Nick began. Something swelled in his throat, and with an effort he swallowed. “She died, last year.”

  Something in Annalise’s face shifted, but again that hardness was there like a wall. “That’s awful,” she said, her voice small.

  “I gave away all of her clothes,” he continued. “But I couldn’t get rid of that dress. Sentimental, I guess. So when I saw you in it, I was … upset. You lose someone and it’s … you get reminded and it’s like you lose them again.” Too late he brought himself up short, his face slack with shame. “God, Annalise, I’m sorry. Your parents—”

  “It’s fine,” she said. Her voice was toneless. “I don’t want to talk about that.” She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall, like she was waiting for a bus. Her eyes on the floor, she added, “Thank you for the coffee.”

  Nick looked at her, the studied blankness of her expression, her whole slumped posture trying to indicate boredom and indifference. She might as well have been wearing an actual suit of armor with spikes. He realized that the rain had stopped; through the window he saw the shadows of clouds race across the surface of the lake, followed by a swelling sunlight.

  “Grab your sneakers,” he said. “We’re going on a walk.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They started out walking up the drive, Nick leading, the gravel crunching beneath their feet. Before the drive hooked left to follow the ridgeline of the hill on the eastern flank of the lake, Nick stepped through a break in the rhododendron onto a worn footpath that wound lazily up a gentler slope. He’d given Annalise a walking stick and a spare rain jacket that hung loosely from her shoulders. The rain had left the path muddy, but he clearly knew where he was going and where to step. “You okay?” he called, planting his own walking stick firmly on the ground as he moved forward.

  Annalise glared at her uncle’s back. “I’m great. I love walking around in the woods. Maybe we’ll find another snake.”

  “That’s why we have these,” he said, holding up his own walking stick without turning around.

  “What, so we can beat them to death?”

  Nick thumped his stick on the ground. “No, so we can warn them we’re coming.”

  Annalise muttered, “Fucking snakes.”

  What were they doing out her
e, hiking up a mountain? Okay, a big hill, but whatever. She had never liked hiking; walking to her was a means of getting somewhere. Her father had once planned a hike at Torrey Pines, a state reserve north of San Diego. We’ll walk on the beach, we’ll bond, it’ll be fun, Dad had said. Ten-year-old Annalise asked if they could bring their old Labrador, Gus, with them. “Sure,” Dad said, smiling. “The salt air will be good for his old bones.” But when they’d driven all the way up the coast to the reserve, they saw the big sign that read NO DOGS ALLOWED. Dad cussed and made a big production about how they’d driven all that way, even though it had taken less than half an hour on a Saturday morning, and then he tried to get Annalise to sneak Gus into the reserve. She stood in the parking lot, holding Gus on his leash, with Gus looking miserable and sad eyed as her father insisted that they just go, it wasn’t a big deal. And then a park ranger rolled up in a pickup truck and told her father that he was sorry, but dogs weren’t allowed in the reserve. Annalise was convinced that her dad was going to pull out a twenty and try a bribe, but he just gave the ranger a jerky nod and then told Annalise to get back in the car. All the way home he said nothing, just glowered out the windshield, and Gus laid his head on his paws and gazed dolefully at Annalise.

  That had been the only time her father tried to take her on a hike. One event in a long list of failed attempts and broken promises.

  A defiant voice in her head said, That’s not all that he was.

  No, sometimes he was the guy who brought home suitcases full of cash, another voice said, bitter and resigned. And sometimes he came home broke. Then there was the time we had to move because he could no longer afford the mortgage and he’d lost most of our savings.